All through the long summer days Betsy and her friends had played in the summerhouse. But now it was November, and the summerhouse had been boarded up. "What I need," Betsy said to her father, "is a winterhouse to play in." And that is just what her father built for her - a winterhouse in the basement. It became the scene of many exciting times for Betsy and Ellen and Billy Porter and all the others. There was the New Year's party, at which Billy struggled manfully with his piece of cake that had a sponge in it, there was the day when they found a stray cat and two kittens in the washing machine, and best of all was the musical puppet show complete with a chorus dressed in Scotch kilts.

Betsy and her friends never have a dull moment, and the books about them are full of the unpredictable fun of their lives. Miss Haywood also writes with warmth and tenderness, and the enormous popularity of her work shows that these are the qualities children take to their hearts.

From the dust jacket